Abstract

The dynamic characteristics of III-nitride multi-quantum well laser diodes(LDs) emitting at 410 nm were investigated. LDs were grown on semipolar bulk GaN substrates and fabricated into devices with cavity lengths ranging from 900 nm to 1800 nm. A 3-dB bandwidth of 5 GHz and 5 Gbit/s direct modulation with on-off keying were demonstrated, which were limited by the bandwidth of the photodetector used for the measurements. The differential gain of the LDs was determined to be 2.5 ± 0.5 × 10−16 cm2 by comparing the slope efficiency for different cavity lengths. Analysis of the frequency response showed that the K-factor, the gain compression factor, and the intrinsic maximum bandwidth were 0.33 ns, 7.4 × 10−17 cm3, and 27 GHz, respectively.

This work was funded by the KACST-KAUST-UCSB Solid State Lighting Program (SSLP) and by the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center (SSLEEC) at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). A portion of this work was done in the UCSB nanofabrication facility, part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) (ECS-0335765). This work also made use of UCSB Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) central facilities supported by the NSF MRSEC Program (DMR05-20415). The authors thank Professor L. A. Coldren for fruitful discussions.

Abstract

The dynamic characteristics of III-nitride multi-quantum well laser diodes(LDs) emitting at 410 nm were investigated. LDs were grown on semipolar bulk GaN substrates and fabricated into devices with cavity lengths ranging from 900 nm to 1800 nm. A 3-dB bandwidth of 5 GHz and 5 Gbit/s direct modulation with on-off keying were demonstrated, which were limited by the bandwidth of the photodetector used for the measurements. The differential gain of the LDs was determined to be 2.5 ± 0.5 × 10−16 cm2 by comparing the slope efficiency for different cavity lengths. Analysis of the frequency response showed that the K-factor, the gain compression factor, and the intrinsic maximum bandwidth were 0.33 ns, 7.4 × 10−17 cm3, and 27 GHz, respectively.